15 Geeky Film Facts To Impress Your Mates With

So you think you’re a film geek do you? Well lets see if you know any these weird, wonderful and downright random facts!

1.The Lunch Meeting To End All Lunch Meetings

In 1994, a year before “Toy Story” was released in cinemas, Pixar’s original creative geniuses John Lasseter, Joe Ranft, Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton all met for lunch. A meeting which will go down in film history. This is because by the end of this meeting, they conceived ideas and characters for “A Bug’s Life” (1998), “Monsters Inc” (2001), “Finding Nemo” (2003) and “WALL-E” (2008). Stanton said that the four of them would bring the best out of each other when they were together. Thus enabling this flurry of creative ideas. I’ll have what they’re having.

2. Wes Craven Makes Drew BarrymoreScream

Drew Barrymore is a very keen animal lover but when filming “Scream”, during which she is famously killed off in 10 minutes, Director Wes Craven used this against her. The scene features Barrymore looking very frightened and upset, so to maintain this throughout Craven repeatedly told her stories of animal cruelty. Barrymore commented that she didn’t like to fake tears so worked with Wes to make the scene feel more real.

He and I had this secret story. We would just talk about it every time cause it just made me cry every time I thought about it
- Drew Barrymore

Judging by the photo, it clearly worked! If you haven’t seen “Scream”, it is worth watching. A horror film that satirically parodies itself by exposing the rules of surviving a horror film.

3. Geekiest Cameo Of All Time

Not only do beloved friends R2D2 and C3PO appear in all 6 “Star Wars” films (hope 7,8 &9 as well if you’re reading Mr. Abrams!). But they actually do make a small appearance in another Lucasfilm classic “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Yes I kid you not. During the scene when Indy discovers the Ark of the Covenant, if you pause you can clearly see them in the background as hieroglyphics. Don’t believe me? Just look at the picture!

4. More Pixar Creativity

To further justify the creative genius of Pixar, there is a great little story from when “Monster’s Inc” was being made. The voice of Boo was a toddler named Mary Gibbs and being a toddler, the makers found it hard to get her to sit down and record all the lines. So instead what they did was follow her around with a microphone while she was playing and pieced all her dialogue from that. So what you hear from Boo in the actual film is the final version of those recordings.

5. “You talkin’ to me?”

The dialogue in this most iconic scene from Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” wasn’t actually written in the script. Robert De Niro completely improvised the whole thing as the screenplay said “Travis speaks to himself in the mirror”. Since then the line has become a pop culture icon, being parodied and imitated in a wide variety of films and TV shows.

6. Left Hand Man

While filming “Pirates of the Caribbean”, Geoffrey Rush requested that whenever he shares the screen with the more attractive cast members, i.e. Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp, that he be placed in the left of the shot for as much as possible. This is because he believed that western audiences have a tendency to move their eyes from left to right. Rush thought that if he were on the right then audiences won’t even realise he is there because they would still be looking at the attractive cast members.

7. Never Has Method Acting Been So Elaborate

To prepare for his role in “Cast Away”, Tom Hanks stopped exercising and gained some weight so that he could look like an average middle aged man. When the scenes requiring a pudgy Tom Hanks were completed, the production was put on hiatus for a year to allow Hanks to lose 50 pounds and grow out his hair for the time his character was stranded on the island. It was during this time when Director Robert Zemeckis made “What Lies Beneath”.

8. I’m Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today!

The happy go lucky, morale boosting ending of “Clerks” features Dante simply clocking out and leaving at the end of his shift. However this wasn’t supposed to be the original ending, which saw Dante being gunned down and killed by an armed robber. He wasn’t even supposed to be there today. Watch the alternate ending here! Thank you internet!

9. “We’ll Sort That Out In Post”

How many of you have heard or said this line before? How many times has it actually been ‘sorted’? Well not to worry! Even the most legendary films get things wrong sometimes. In the first scene classic film noir “Double Indemnity”, there is clearly a wedding ring on the character Walter Neff’s finger. Although the character wasn’t married, the actor, Fred McMurray was and it was not discovered until post production. Yet, it still is often regarded as one of the greatest Noir’s in history.

10. Universal Are Kicking Themselves Now...

When George Lucas was making “American Graffiti”, he was a completely unknown director. He approached Universal Studios with the idea for “Star Wars” in 1973 and they turned it down. Big mistake. Just six months later “American Graffiti” was a massive hit, grossing $117 million making Lucas a star. He was then approached by an executive at 20th Century Fox who was determined to work with Lucas that we was prepared to finance “Star Wars”. It is now in the top 24 highest grossing films in history and that, as they say, is history.

11. ...Coincidentally, so are 20th Century Fox

Another “Star Wars” related one is perhaps one of the best examples of a big studio mistake. Fox were so eager to work with Lucas that they let him pass on an additional directorial fee of $500,000 in exchange for keeping the licensing and merchandising rights for himself. A decision that cost the company billions.

12. Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane? No Its Nic Cage!

Nicolas Cage was once in line to play Superman in a 1990s reboot of the franchise entitled “Superman Lives”. It was supposed to be directed by Tim Burton and judging by the picture would have been fantastic.

13. The Worst Film Of All Time

The film “Disaster Movie” is officially the worst film of all time. This is according to reviews and opinion polls on IMDB. Averaging just a 1.3/10 rating on IMDB and a 2% on Rotten Tomatoes. Haven’t seen it? I wouldn’t bother. Unless you want to see just how bad it is, then go ahead!

14. 3 Is The Magic Number

This list just won’t be complete another Pixar related fact! If you are a huge Pixar nerd like I am, then you may already know everything I am about to say here. However if you don’t, fear not! I am about to tell you.

Pixar have produced a total of 13 feature films and all of them include a number of traditions. Whether or not the film is set in medieval Scotland or a world where Cars talk. They always insert them in there somewhere! So here is a breakdown of all of them.

- John Ratzenberger has a voice role in every Pixar film, notably Hamm in the “Toy Story” films.

- The Pizza Planet Truck, notably from “Toy Story” appears in every Pixar film apart from “Brave” .

- The number ‘A113’, the classroom number of Pixar animators/ alumni from California Institute of Arts. It first appeared in “Toy Story” as the number plate of Andy’s Mums car and has featured ever since in various ways ever since. Even as Roman numerals in “Brave”.

15. Space 1999

James Cameron’s 2009 smash hit “Avatar”, the highest grossing film of all time and the film which single handedly brought 3D back to mainstream cinema. But did you know that James Cameron actually originally planned for a 1999 release? The special effects he wanted increased the budget to $400 million. Which at the time was pretty high! So it was shelved for 8 years. This kind of explains his hiatus from filmmaking for so long. I’m glad it was shelved if I’m honest because it is such a pretty film, the visuals and effects are sublime. It would have looked so much different 10 years previously!

So you’ve made it to end! Hooray! You are now equipped with the knowledge to either impress or bore your mates in the pub. How many did you know? Have we missed any? Post in the comments section below!

Lloyd Davies is a recent graduate from Middlesex University, having got his Bachelors degree in Television Production in July 2012.

Since then he has worked at the London 2012 Olympics as part of a team producing entertainment during the Marathon Swim and Triathlon Events, “Celebrity Big Brother” and “The Million Pound Drop”. Lloyd has been accepted on a Masters degree course at Birkbeck, University of London to study Film, Television and Screen Media. Lloyd loves watching, discussing and writing about films and TV dramas and has ambitions to do a PhD and become a Lecturer in Film Studies.

Actually there's more to the story of "Travis talks to the mirror" scene in Taxi Driver. Scorcese basically told DeNiro to give him a few different versions of the line ("you talkin' to me?") while he left the camera rolling saying he wanted some choices when he got the movie into the editing room. Later after screening the take of the different ways DeNiro spoke the line a light bulb went off over his head and he ended up using them all. The rest is history.